Worshiping With Children: Worshiping at Home on August 23, 2020

Worshiping at Home on August 23, 2020

GETTING READY TO WORSHIP TOGETHER AT HOME

When a family that includes children worships at home, it will look more free form than what happens in a sanctuary. Especially HEARING THE WORD will be more active. Children explore God’s word with eyes, voices, hands and even feet as well as their ears. Within this free form it also good to have a few rituals that are repeated every week. You will find suggestions for both ways to hear God’s particular Word each week and rituals that surround it every week. Over the weeks, every family will develop their own worship style.

Worship Theme: Moses’ mother, daughter Miriam, and the pharaoh’s daughter were nobodies who did what they could to save baby Moses from Pharaoh’s death threat. What they did worked. Moses grew up into a man who could lead God’s people from slavery. Today we’ll pair this story with “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To help us identify everyday ways we can help God’s kingdom come.

Set up your worship space. Make a worship center if you wish. Worship centers may include a Bible (today open to Exodus 1), a candle, and a doll baby in a basket. Some households will set up chairs in rows or a circle. Others will simply worship wherever they gather.

It is possible to worship together without singing at all. But if your family sings together, decide before worship what you will sing. Sing whatever songs about Jesus and God your family knows. If you have a hymnal, look up “God” or “Jesus” or “Praise God” in the topical index to find familiar hymns. If you have instrument players, choose the songs enough ahead that they can practice and play along as you sing. If you have recorded music sing along with your favorite singer. Songs especially good for this worship time are…

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated

Go Down Moses

WORSHIPING GOD TOGETHER

CALLING YOURSELVES TO WORSHIP

Keep it simple and repeat it each week. It becomes a way to say we are getting started now. Light or switch on the candle and say, “Come, let us worship God together.”

SINGING FOR GOD AND JESUS

Sing one or more songs of happy praise that you selected as you got ready to worship.

HEARING AND EXPLORING THE WORD

If you have four readers in your household assign one part in this story to each of them. If you have 3 female readers, hurray! If you do not, assign female parts to males and challenge them to get into the role. If you do not have four readers, ask one reader to read the whole story as dramatically as possible.

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Exodus 1:8–14; 2:1-10

Narrator: Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

Moses’ Mother: Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.

Miriam: His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

Pharaoh’s Daughter: The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said.

Miriam: Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

Pharaoh’s Daughter: Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.”

Moses’ Mother: So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and

Pharaoh’s Daughter: And she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

All Readers: This is the word of God.

New Revised Standard Version

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QUESTIONS TO PONDER:

How did Moses’ mother save him from pharaoh’s death threat? What was hard and easy about that?

How did Miriam save her baby brother? How did that save her people from slavery in Egypt? Do you think she would have been surprised to think of what she did that way while she was doing it?

How did Pharaoh’s daughter save Moses from her father’s threat? What was brave about what she did? How did what she did help Moses become a man who could lead his people to freedom?

When you finish your explorations, everyone says together, “This is the Word of the Lord.”

PRAYING FOR OURSELVES AND THE WORLD

Point out that every time we prayer the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Note that the only way that prayer will come true is if we work at making it true. God is counting on us. Miriam, Moses’ mother, and pharaoh’s daughter all helped God’s will be done for Moses. Invite worshipers to pray about ways God needs us to make the kingdom come today.

Leader: There are lots of chores to do to keep a home going smoothly – cooking, cleaning, mowing, laundry, dusting, vacuuming… The list goes on and on. Help us find ways to share the chores at our home fairly.